The Andean nation of Bolivia has been home to a number of remarkable cultures, and as a result many archaeological sites remain in the country. The Fuerte de Samaipata site has been recognized as...
The Chislehurst Caves are a series of subterranean tunnels , man-made rooms, and caverns located in the southeastern part of Greater London . Although the history of the caves stretches back much...
Thousands of environmental protesters have unified in a plight to save the last 200 hectares of Germany's ancient Hambach Forest from being felled by the coal hungry German energy giant RWE. In the...
A number of ancient settlement sites were recently discovered in the Amazon’s Upper Tapajós Basin. This is no El Dorado – although you’d be forgiven for thinking so. The press coverage demonstrates a...
A 19th century Catholic Church in Germany was demolished last week by an energy company that destroyed an entire village in order to make way for coal mining in Immerath, Western Germany. The company...
In the remote South Australian desert, where temperatures are known to reach 125 °F / 51 °C in the shade, lies a town named Coober Pedy (literally ‘white man’s hole’), where residents have dug...
Gold was referred to by the Pre-Columbian ancient South American cultures as ‘Semen of the Sun’ and ‘Sweat of the Sun’ but in that continent, where it was so abundantly available, it held no...
Created an unimaginably distant time in the past, diamonds are the most coveted and valued of precious stones. The story of the discovery and destiny of the Cullinan diamond, to this day the largest...
3,200 years ago, a young Egyptian woman breathed her final breath before collapsing on the harsh desert sands near a copper mine. She was pregnant, and history suggests she probably wasn’t taking...
The earliest historical heritage and cultural identity of many Europeans is threatened – by coal. A year ago, in the forest area of Góry in Eastern Wielkopolska (Poland), a set of 5,500-year-old...
Salina Turda is a salt mine located in the Durgău-Valea Sărată area of Turda, which is a city in Romania’s Cluj County. Salt extraction at Salina Turda began during the medieval period, and continued...
Salt was one of the greatest treasures of the ancient world. Production facilities dedicated to the mineral provided work for many people, but now most of the sites are destroyed or hidden deeply...
In an article on the Fuente Magna Bowl , April Holloway highlighted the evidence of Sumerian writing in South America. The Fuente Magna Bowl and Pokotia monument indicate that Sumerians may have...
Since ancient times, demand for metals has been a big part of commercial exchange between countries separated by great distance. The Armenian Highland is situated between the Anatolian and Iranian...
Thorikos, an ancient town in Attica, was the site of a network of 5 kilometers (3 miles) of silver mines right underneath the town’s acropolis. Researchers believe slaves did the hard work of...
Mining in the Alps dates back much further than previously thought -- in the Austrian region of Montafon since the Bronze Age. Thanks to C14 dating, a group of researchers from Goethe University in...
The Rio Tinto mine in Spain is set to re-open after being closed in 2001 due to declines in production, EMED Mining announced to Australian Mining . Reportedly one of the oldest mines in the world,...
Mes Aynak, a 2,000-year-old Buddhist city atop a 5,000-year-old Bronze Age settlement in Afghanistan, is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. Only ten percent of...
Stone Age Iberian miners of both sexes 5,300 to 4,300 years ago are believed to have had important status in their community near what is now Barcelona, Spain, as some of their dead were entombed in...
It is perhaps due to the importance of salt that one of the biggest salt mines in the world is associated with one of the greatest conquerors of the ancient world. Cheap and easily available, s alt...
Empires may rise and fall, but the impact they have on their conquered subjects and the future may continue beyond their passing, for better or for worse. The Spanish Empire, which began in the 15 th...
Scientists studying ice core samples from Peru have discovered a variety of trace elements, indicating that Spanish colonial mining caused toxic air pollution over South America approximately 240...
Complex hydraulic systems and the methods of ancient Roman gold mining have been discovered using sophisticated laser detection and aerial mapping over Las Médulas in northwestern Spain...
In 2004, German archaeologists from Ruhr-University Bochum discovered the gold mine in Sakdrissi. Dated to the third millennium BC, it is one of the oldest known gold mines in the world and has been...
